


Hiding Alone in the Shadows

by SeeEmRunning



Series: Right Now (We'll Stand) [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Espionage, Gen, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 16:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9558284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeeEmRunning/pseuds/SeeEmRunning
Summary: In 1997, Snape searches for his student. In 2012, Reese, Shaw, and Finch try to protect a high-school chemistry teacher from an unknown threat.(No prior knowledge of Person of Interest needed. Just know Reese, Finch, and Shaw try to help people in trouble.)





	1. Prologue

Prologue: Run Away  
_April 1997_

Jonathan Stroop, formerly known as Severus Snape, stared at the open door. Slowly, he raised his wand and waved it closed.

What had possessed him? He’d known the moment the words came out of his mouth that he’d gone too far, but he hadn’t been able to stop them. The shock, the fury, the _hurt_ on her face made him feel about two feet tall.

She was right, too, that was the bitch of it. He _was_ withdrawing and losing his edge. He’d felt someone mucking about his wards but hadn’t bothered to stop them. If he would let her, she probably _could_ help him.

He just had to shove his pride down far enough to apologize.

He stared down at his marking, replaying the scene in his head. He usually had more control, but recently, thoughts had begun to intrude at the most inopportune times, and even he couldn’t control them. He was afraid, he had finally admitted to himself in March, afraid he would end up in the Janus Thickey ward at St. Mungo’s, and he’d been self-medicating to avoid that fate.

 _Merlin._ He’d really bollocksed it up this time. He doubted the girl even knew she was crying when she’d left. She was just that angry and hurt.

Well, he was better off alone, anyway, and Granger would be better off without a miserable bastard like him looming over her.  
***  
_March 2012_

“Mr. Reese,” Finch said when he walked in. “We have a new number.”

“I figured,” he said, cracking his neck. There was a nasty bruise on his cheek, covered by an ice pack. He limped to a chair and peered at his face in the shiny casing of one of Finch’s computers: his grey hair was streaked with blood from a cut just above the hairline. “I need a shower first, though.”

“Of course,” Finch said agreeably. “And wrap that knee.”

Reese sent him a filthy look. “It’s fine. Just twisted.”

“I can do it,” Shaw said, looking up from where she was petting Bear. “Who is it?”

“A high school science teacher,” Finch said, taping a picture of a square-jawed blonde to the glass that served as a whiteboard. “Doreen Wood.”

“Her last name’s Wood and she teaches high school? She must be tough.” Shaw smirked.

“Where’d she get that scar?” Reese asked. It was deep and angled, marring her nose and both cheeks.

“Her social media doesn’t say,” Finch said. “She sought asylum from Moldova in 1999, alleging the government failed to protect her from neo-Nazis. She’s been here since - GED, Associate’s degree, a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Biochemistry, and now she’s going for a Ph.D.”

“So we’re thinking neo-Nazis found her?” Shaw guessed.

“That’s a possibility,” Finch said. “Or it could have to do with her work - she’s been deeply involved in evaluating folk medicine and has published papers claiming that supplements are useless. She’s also written multiple papers refuting intelligent design, putting her at odds with the people who have written papers on how biochemistry proves intelligent design. Apparently it’s a hot debate.” He frowned and typed some more. “She’s gotten threats from a few animal rights groups after she admitted to using monkeys for research in her master’s thesis.”

“So we don’t actually know where the threat’s coming from,” Reese said.

“Unfortunately not. I’ll be going into the school as a substitute biology teacher. Miss Shaw, you’ll be on surveillance duty. Mr. Reese, you’ve got the computers until that knee heals.”

“It’s just twisted!”

Finch leveled a look at him. “And that concussion you’re nursing is just a headache.”

“It is.”

“You’ve got the computers,” he repeated.  
***  
Doreen was being followed.

They were subtle about it. She never actually caught sight of them. But if there was one thing she’d learned over the years, it was to always trust her instincts. Her instincts were screaming that she’d been found out despite the carefully-crafted cover that had landed her in New York City three years ago. 

Until she had more than a feeling, though, she couldn’t reach out for help. She’d just have to be careful.


	2. Drugs Are A Problem Here

_June 1997_

He missed her.

He missed her wicked sense of humor. He missed the way she understood what he told her. He missed the easy camaraderie they’d shared for so long. He even missed her unannounced intrusions into his office.

But he’d driven her away, and whenever he tried to apologize, his pride got in the way and choked his throat shut. Whispers reached his ears - Granger’s patience was dwindling, she was easily upset, she was apt to take points away rather than hand them out. She was becoming him, bitter and angry at the world and not bothering to hide it.

The world didn’t need another _him._ It would do better with _her_.

And then, rather abruptly, the world didn’t have her, either.  
***  
 _March 2012_

“Oh - sorry, I must have the wrong classroom.”

The blonde looked up from her desk, and her eyes found the badge declaring him a substitute. “Who’re you looking for?”

“Germaine Saol?”

“Right across the hall,” she said with only the slightest trace of an accent. “I’m Doreen Wood. You need anything, let me know.” 

“Thank you,” he said. “Harold Swallow. Can I ask what the kids are like here?”

She shrugged. “They’re teenagers in a big city.”

“Is that different from teenagers in a small town?”

She grinned. “Small town teenagers get drunk and go cow-tipping. New York teenagers get drunk and rob convenience stores.”

“Really?”

“Close enough. Area’s pretty affluent, so we’re spared the worst of the robbery but have a lot of coke. Saol’s got mostly tenth-graders. Little punks.” There was a hint of fondness to her words, softening the insult. “Watch out for your third period, those are your seniors, looking forward to ending school. Couple druggies mixed in.”

“So drugs are a problem here?”

“They’re a problem at every school.” She glanced at the clock. “I’m sorry, I promised my first period I’d have this marking done by today.”

He took the hint and walked across the hall to his classroom for the week. “I couldn’t clone her phone. Did you get all that, Mr. Reese?”

“I got it,” he said. “Doesn’t have a high opinion of her students, does she?”

He ignored that. “Miss Shaw?”

“In her house,” she said. “Not finding anything yet. Worst I’ve got is no photographs. Why couldn’t you clone her phone?”

“Either someone has beaten us to it or she’s taken precautions. We’ll simply have to bug her home - I’ll get her classroom when she leaves to get lunch.” A bell rang shrilly. “Excuse me - there are about to be students in here.” Not waiting for an answer, he turned off his microphone.  
***  
Doreen knew there was something off with that man.

His hand had been fiddling around in his pocket, but not in the way perverts’ hands did. He carried a laptop bag and nothing else. He was dressed in too nice a suit to be a professional substitute. There was something in his eyes that told her that he knew exactly who she was. She was tempted to ask him right out who he worked for - she had no shortage of enemies - but restrained herself. No use tipping her hand quite yet.


	3. Stash House

_June 1997_

“Do you know where Hermione Granger is?”

“No.”

“Do you know where she went last night?”

“No.”

“Do you know who took her?”

“No.”

“Who do you believe took her?”

“Pureblood sympathizers.”

“Why do you think that?”

“They’re her enemies.”

Rockledge rubbed his eyes as he watched the interrogation of Jonathan Stroop in a Pensieve. The man had been given Veritaserum to ensure his truthfulness. The rest of the Ilvermorny staff had gone through the same ordeal, and all had given virtually identical answers. Stroop, though, they had been holding out hope for; he was her closest friend.

“I understand you argued earlier this year. Why?”

“She thought there was something wrong with me.”

“Is there?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t keep my thoughts in order.”

“How do you mean?”

“I keep seeing the past.”

“And Granger didn’t like that?”

“I never told her.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t want her help.”

“Why not?”

“I thought I was better off alone, and she was better off without me.”

“You don’t think that anymore?”

“No.”

“What changed?”

“We fought. The students told me she was becoming another me.”

Thomas, the Enforcer questioning Stroop, sighed. “You have no idea where she’s being held?”

“No.”

“Very well. You’ll remain here until the Veritaserum clears your system.”

The memory dissolved. Rockledge left the Pensieve.

“Thoughts?” Thomas prompted when he came back out.

“He doesn’t know. Nobody knows. The best lead we have is the hag somebody saw at the bar where Wilson was killed.”

“Think Granger’s still alive?”

“I don’t know. I hope so.” His fingers drummed the tabletop. “I don’t understand why Liberty would take her.”

“Why not?”

“She agreed with them.”

“She did?”

“Yeah. Said something about how she’d just fought a war to be seen as human, and now we’re doing the same thing Voldemort did.”

A beat of a pause. “Do you agree with her?”

“No,” he said, just little too quickly. “Of course not.”

“Good. Now-”

 

Before he could continue, Pickrell poked her head in. “We’ve got word of a structure fire, arson, thirty bodies confirmed, more suspected.”

They scrambled to the Portkey room.  
***  
 _March 2012_  
Wood had first-shift lunch duty, so she was sure to be in the cafeteria right after the bell to signal the end of fourth period. Finch waited until she left her classroom to slip in, plant the bug, and return to his own classroom.

Just outside the city limits, Shaw picked the lock on Wood’s small house. “How’d she afford a house on a teacher’s salary?” she muttered.

“It’s mortgaged,” Reese answered. “Heavily. Find anything yet?”

“Yeah, seven locks on her front door. She knows someone’s after her.”

“She did flee her home country,” Reese reminded her.

“Yeah, but still.” Shaw shoved the door open irritably. “Seven locks is a little paranoid.”

“Coming from you?”

“Oh, shut up.” Shaw’s eyes caught on a wall-mounted box. “Alarm system.”

“Can you disable it?”

“No shit I can, just shut up.”

It took less than twenty seconds to disarm the system. Shaw turned her attention to the task at hand.

The place was almost eerily clean. Not a speck of dust was out of place, and the drying rack next to the sink was empty. It was decorated nicely, like something straight out of _Better Homes & Gardens_. She set a small recorder on top of the refrigerator, far enough back that Wood wouldn’t be able to see it unless she was looking for it. “Online?”

“Online,” Reese said after a few seconds. Shaw snapped her fingers. “Sight and sound.”

“Good. That’s the kitchen.”

Shaw moved to the living room next. An entertainment system stood along one wall, facing a comfortable-looking armchair. Next to the armchair was a small table with a lamp and a stack of magazines. “Journals,” Shaw said after a moment of scrutiny. “Biology and chemistry.”

“She is a biochemist,” Reese said in her ear.

Shaw rolled her eyes, planted this room’s bug, and moved on. She didn’t bug the bathroom - there were some lines they just weren’t willing to cross - but, like the other rooms, it was clean and tidy.

The door at the end of the hallway opened into a bedroom. Here, at last, was proof that someone lived here: the laundry hamper was half-full. The queen-sized bed was made neatly with a fluffy, blue-and-white-striped bedspread. A nightstand on the right side held a lamp, a book, medicine bottles, and a box of tissues.

She hid the bug slightly behind a mirror over the dresser that stood next to the door. “Online?”

“Online,” Reese’s voice said after a pause. She snapped her fingers again. “Sight and sound.”

Shaw moved to the nightstand. “Duloxetine, lorazepam, eszopiclone.”

“Depression,” Reese said slowly, “anxiety, and...insomnia.”

Shaw slid open the drawer. “Got supplies to maintain a gun,” she announced. “Gun’s missing. Probably carries it with her.” She checked the ammo box. “It’s a .22. Ammo’s Smith & Wesson.”

“No permits on file.”

“Might’ve bought it off the street.” Shaw closed the drawer and looked at the book. “I didn’t know Meg Cabot wrote for adults.”

“Who?”

“Teen girls like her,” Shaw said absently, moving to the bookshelves that dominated the wall on the far side of the room. “Everything’s alphabetized by author if it’s fiction, separated by subject on nonfiction. Textbooks on the bottom. No notebooks or knick-knacks.”

“What about the closet?”

The closet was on the wall to the right of the hallway door. She swung open the door and looked inside. “Clothes are in rainbow order,” she said. “Tops, pants, skirts, dresses. This girl’s got some _serious_ OCD with her stuff.”

“Not sure it falls under OCD.”

“Whatever.” Shaw examined the closet. “Don’t see any shelves or boxes.” About to close the door again, she noticed a spackle of drywall in the bottom corner, just over the molding, and knelt down. She knocked gently, getting a hollow _thump_ in answer. The same sound came no matter where she knocked. “The closet’s got a false back,” she told Reese. “I can’t get in without destroying it, and she’d notice that.”

“There’s nothing personal in any of the rooms,” Reese said. “Closet’s got a false back. You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Stash house,” Shaw said. “Our girl’s a cop.”

“I’ll call Lionel, see if I can find out what she’s involved with.”  
***  
Doreen knew the moment someone entered her house. The fact that they’d been able to get onto her property told her that they weren’t planning to hurt or rob her, and the lack of alarms meant that it was a No-Maj who’d entered. With all that, there were two options: the syndicate she’d infiltrated was checking up on her, or else an unknown quantity had mysterious reasons for snooping around her.

Either way, she couldn’t leave to investigate until school was out. The sub across the hall was no sub. Perhaps he was the mysterious entity, with subordinates on his payroll?

She was getting too damn paranoid to be effective.

“Ms. Wood?”

She blinked at her students. Raquelle Johnson had been the one to say her name. She smiled absently and said, “Sorry. Where was I?”

The rest of the day dragged on. After classes she had meetings, and after meetings she had to grade, and after grading she had to go across town and attend a chemistry class for her PhD.

She stumbled into the house just after nine, exhausted and hungry. She munched dry cereal straight from the box while she searched for something to make for dinner. The best to be said for the day was that it was Friday, and she could sleep in a bit the next day. She was also due to check in with her handler.

She rose close to ten the next morning after a restless night’s sleep. Even with the No-Maj drugs, she had nightmares. It was annoying, to say the least.

She ate lightly and went through a door covered with Notice-Me-Not Charms. Her private lab was through here; it took up half the house, and it had been quite a trick to make it seem as though all of this space was in the other rooms. Definitely one of the spells she was proudest of.

She had three potions bubbling away. The most important was Felix Felicis, or liquid luck. It was a difficult, fiddly potion, one that she had fouled up the first time she’d attempted to brew it, but she couldn’t _not_ have it on hand. It had saved her life more times than she’d care to count. Just now it was nearing the dark green indicating a week to full maturity. The other two, Wound-Healing and Veritaserum, were further from completion.

She stretched, feeling her spine pop. It was time to shower and head into the city. She enjoyed the hot water, near limitless, a luxury she was determined to not take for granted.

Her syndicate subordinates were waiting for her in the back room of a run-down convenience store. A light-blue sedan followed her into the city, but drove past when she found parking. She browsed the shelves idly and slipped into the meeting space when she was relatively sure that only the security cameras were watching.

“Hello, Meneur,” one of the men said.

“Patrick,” she said, smiling at him. “Where are we with Midtown?”

“Distribution’s running smooth. Supply’s getting bumpy, though.”

“Problem with payoffs?”

“New boss doesn’t understand how things work.”

“Money?”

“We’ll try, but he’s a do-gooder type.”

“If cash doesn’t work, loop me in. Boris, how’s Downtown coming?”

“No problems.”

“Sam, what about Uptown?”

“Elias and the Russians are causing trouble.”

“When do they not?”

Sam laughed, flashing her too-white teeth. “We need more men.”

“Can we take them from Downtown?”

Boris answered, “A couple, but too many and we’ll start having problems with the cartels again.”

Doreen waved that off. “Recruit faster,” she ordered. “You and Sam work out the particulars. I want Uptown under control by the end of the quarter. Patrick, take care of that newbie, and keep recruiting. Don’t take from the other gangs, that’s just asking for trouble.”

“Yes, Meneur,” they all three chorused.

“Anything else?”

They all shook their heads.

“Let’s get out of here.” She picked up a discarded newspaper and began doing the crossword.

They left one by one, waiting a few minutes between and watching the security feed to make sure nobody was observing them. When Doreen was alone in the back room, she filled in the crossword boxes with a coded report for her handler. She dropped the paper in a trash can at the corner of 72nd and Madison as she made her way to Central Park. As she waited for the light to change so she could cross, she caught sight of a silver-haired man - solid, mid-forties to early fifties, carrying under his tailored suit jacket - standing over that same trash can. He followed her into the park, but turned right on a path while she continued straight. She kept an eye out for him as she continued to her destination, wandering down side paths, taking her time and keeping her eyes peeled for another glimpse of him, or for anyone else who seemed a little too interested in her.

There was a discarded cell phone in the grass near the John Lennon Memorial - a Motorola pre-paid. She tripped and snagged it as she clambered gracelessly to her feet. She kept wandering, toward the exit this time. Her stroll was over.

A shot rang out, and pain made itself known in her calf. She yelped and stumbled, falling again; another bullet whizzed past and struck a bystander in the shoulder, who screamed and dropped.

Pandemonium erupted around her. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to stand, her short stature a blessing - it let her blend into the crowd. She half-ran, half-stumbled her way to the Metro station on 72nd and Central Park West, focused on getting away. She hurried into the first bathroom she saw, limped into an open stall, dropped the cell on the toilet paper holder, and pulled up her pants leg to inspect the damage.

The bullet had gone clean through the muscle in the back of her calf, bisecting the faded Dark Mark. Her leg hurt like hell, but it was supporting her weight, so there wasn’t too much damage. She had a decision to make now: heal it with magic, or let it heal naturally. Healing it with magic might draw suspicion, if whomever was shooting at her had seen the bullet hit; letting it heal naturally meant her mobility would be impaired. 

She downed the small vial of liquid luck she kept in her purse. Immediately she knew what she had to do, and set to work stopping the bleeding and cleaning the blood from her leg with a few silent spells. That done, she grabbed up the cell once more and dialed the only number in the memory.

“Fu Wang’s takeout.”

Any other day, she would have ordered pineapple chicken for carry-out and received a week’s worth of supplies in the bag. Today, though, she’d been discovered.

“Let me speak to your manager.”

Ten seconds later, the phone _click_ -ed. “Can I help you?” a smooth voice asked.

She swallowed. “I need to make a dentist’s appointment.”

“Number-alpha-green-seven. Status?” the man on the other end of the line asked, all business. 

NAG7. The code for their department.

“An extraction? My molar’s cracked.”

“Sure thing. We can get you in tomorrow at seven PM?”

“Anything sooner?”

A long pause. “No. Pickup location?”

She reeled off her home address.

“Copy that. You have a nice day.”

“You too,” she said automatically to the now-dead phone. She pried open the back, took out the SIM card and battery, and tossed the phone in the trash on her way out the door. The battery went into a separate trash can. The SIM card was broken and tossed onto the tracks. She turned to leave, but instead found herself walking to the ticket kiosk and buying herself a seat on the B train. Knowing it was the Felix Felicis influencing her, she didn’t fight it.

The train came soon enough, and she boarded with the other passengers. There were relatively few, for early afternoon on a Saturday: a couple of bored-looking teens, a homeless guy asleep at the other end of the carriage, a woman reading a book with one earbud in - and a man, mid-fifties, well-dressed, bum hip, who sat down next to her.

“Hello,” Mr. Swallow said.

“Hi,” she said shortly, pulling a book from her purse.

He apparently didn’t take the hint. “I’d like to talk to you.”

She opened her book.

“I saw what happened in Central Park,” he continued. She flipped forward to the dog-eared pages. “Getting shot in the leg and running anyway, you are a tough one.”

“What do you want?”

“To keep you safe,” he said mildly.

A tug in her mind. He meant it. 

“I don’t know who wants to harm you,” he continued, “but I can help.”

She shouldn’t. There were protocols and rules and chains of command. Even so, though, her mouth opened and she asked, “How?”

“I have a safe house nearby. We can wait there while my associates take care of things.”

“And if I don’t want help?”

“You are not obligated to accept, of course. This is an offer, nothing more.”

Another nudge. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

“Is that a yes?”

“It is.” She smiled thinly.

“May I ask if you know who it is that is trying-”

“Later.” She knew it was rude to cut him off, but had he no sense of _subtlety?_ “In private.”

“Of course.”

They didn’t speak again until they were off the train. When they emerged into the street, a silver-haired man - the one she had seen earlier, who had followed her into Central Park - joined them.

“Any problems?” Swallow asked.

“None.” The man glanced at her. “John.”

“Doreen,” she answered.

They stayed silent for nearly fifteen minutes. Doreen’s leg ached fiercely, but she just had to deal with it.


	4. Moyeu

_June 1997_

MACUSA captured a hobgoblin that had survived the structure fire. When questioned, he admitted to being a member of the Champions of Liberty, which had abducted Hermione Granger and killed the other one - though, he hastened to add, he had certainly never killed anyone.

They’d taken her to strike a bargain. The Dark Lord Voldemort had promised creatures greater freedom under his reign, so when his former servants came to them with offers of help, of course they’d accepted. All the Death Eaters wanted in return was for the Champions to deliver them a traitor. Granger had tried to tell them she believed in their ideals, but they weren’t stupid enough to believe her lies.

But once the Death Eaters had taken Granger from them, they’d set Fiendfyre loose on the headquarters and blocked the exits. The Champions of Liberty had been double-crossed. He was the only survivor. Under interrogation, he swore on his life that he had no idea where they’d taken her.

His death sentence was carried out on the first of July.

Severus Snape moved back to Britain after he witnessed the creature’s death. Still under the name Jonathan Stroop, he took the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor at Hogwarts. He spent the long weeks with the Order of the Phoenix, which had been resurrected - if, indeed, it had ever truly been disbanded - to find their missing member. Tonks ran point on the investigation.

On 11 August, they captured an unmarked pureblood sympathizer when he tried to buy Bungweed, a truly insidious poison, from Knockturn Alley. It took nearly a week, but eventually, they got a location from him. It was their best chance.

_March 2012_

The door locked behind them. A dark-haired woman - carrying concealed, and a few knives to boot - was waiting in the spacious room down a half-flight of stairs, scratching the ears of a German shepherd lounging next to her on the sofa.

“What took you so long?”

Swallow looked disapproving. “Trains run on a _schedule_ , Miss Shaw.”

Miss Shaw stood. “Really, Harold?”

So Harold, at least, was his real first name. Or as real as it ever got, anyway; her own first name was usually some variation of ‘Dorcas’, so it wasn’t a stretch to think his first name was some variation on a theme.

“Yes, really. Miss Wood, I think it best if we got down to answers, now. Bear, _hilse venn._ ”

The dog jumped off the couch and approached her. Doreen held out a hand for him to sniff; he licked it. She smiled and scratched his ears. Really, her fondness for animals was her biggest weakness.

“Tea?” Harold offered. “Or coffee?”

“Tea would be wonderful,” she said, suddenly realizing she was parched. She rummaged through her purse and pulled out a bottle of ibuprofen. She dry-swallowed four.

“Have a seat. Miss Shaw, take a look at her leg, would you?”

‘Why-”

“I was a doctor,” Shaw informed her. “What happened?”

“Got shot,” she admitted. “It’s not bad, just a through-and-through.”

“Sit,” she ordered, pointing to the couch. Doreen surrendered and sat, putting her injured leg on the coffee table. Shaw pushed her pants leg up and tore away the makeshift toilet-paper bandage. “You cleaned this.”

“Metro bathroom.”

“Disinfectant?”

“Haven’t had the time.”

“John, go get the first aid kit, will you?” Shaw whistled sharply. The dog came running in from the kitchen. “Bear, _opp._ ”

He hopped up on the couch beside Doreen and put his head in her lap. Harold came out a moment later with a tray laden with steaming mugs and a sugar bowl. “We only have tea bags, I’m afraid.”

“It’s wonderful,” she reassured him. “Thank you.”

John reappeared, carrying a first-aid kit and a towel. He tossed the towel to Shaw, who spread it on the floor below Doreen’s leg, and set the kit on the table. Harold sat in a chair to her right, John in one to the left.

“So who is trying to kill you?” Harold asked as he passed her a mug.

Doreen glanced at the tag on the string. _Sencha green,_ it read on one side, and _Bigelow_ on the other.

“This is gonna hurt,” Shaw warned her, and clamped a gloved hand on her ankle. She twisted the leg to expose the exit wound and poured the contents of a brown bottle - hydrogen peroxide, most likely - onto the hole.

Doreen bit her lip to keep from making a noise. It hurt almost as bad as the bullet had, the peroxide dissolving the clotted blood and getting through to the damaged tissue.

When it had subsided somewhat and Shaw was opening a small baggie of white powder - _probably cocaine,_ she thought clinically, the Felix Felicis telling her to let Shaw work - she answered, “Probably the syndicate. Maybe the UN. Possibly neo-Nazis.”

Harold paused in raising his mug to his lips, but it was John who spoke. “What did you do to piss off that many people?”

The Felix Felicis warned her to tell the truth. “I’m a spy,” she said matter-of-factly. “The UN has...let’s call it a black program. They send us somewhere, and we make problems go away.”

“Wetwork?” Shaw asked, poking at the wound.

Doreen couldn’t even feel it anymore. “Among other things,” she agreed. “Three years ago, I was ordered to infiltrate a syndicate. New name, cover identity, accounts, passports, everything. I was on a plane to New York the day after I got out of Gaza.”

“You were in Gaza in 2009?” John asked.

“Yeah,” Doreen said, idly scratching the dog’s head. “It wasn’t pretty.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Shaw agreed. “This is going to feel weird,” she warned, and threaded a needle.

“Were you there?” she asked Shaw.

“I was.”

Doreen shook her head. “Then you know what a hellhole it was. Anyway, I got here and was ordered to wait for contact. The syndicate grabbed me a week later. I let them recruit me to help design new drugs.” The steady punching of needle through numbed flesh was almost a relief; that and the dog in her lap gave her something to focus on. “I moved up through the ranks. Right now, I control Manhattan. We’re moving on the big boss next week. I must have let something slip, for them to want me dead.” Something about that didn’t quite ring true, but she couldn’t figure out what. She was exhausted. “I called for extraction. After seven o’clock tomorrow, I’ll be out of the country with a new name and a new face.”

“A new face?” Harold asked.

She smiled tightly. “When it comes to creating cover identities, they don’t exactly skimp. This” - she gestured to her face - “is the work of an extremely skilled plastic surgeon. I barely remember what I looked like before I was- before I joined up.” Why she was supposed to fake-slip up, she wasn’t sure. Only Harold had difficulty hiding his expression, and only for a moment, but she knew that they had caught it.

“Could they think you compromised?” Harold asked.

“If they did, I’d be dead already,” she said bluntly. “They wouldn’t stage a shooting with civilians around - well, they might, but they’d shoot two first in non-lethal areas, kill the target, and shoot at least three more.”

“How do you know that?”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to,” Doreen said. It was enough of an answer.

“So it’s either the syndicate or neo-Nazis,” John said.

“Stitching over here’s done,” Shaw said. “Other side.”

Hermione turned her leg obediently. Shaw clamped down on her ankle again, to keep her from moving, and poured the hydrogen peroxide over the smaller entrance wound. “Nice tattoo,” she said. “What, removal didn’t work?”

Doreen shook her head. “It was my first assignment,” she said. “They used some kind of ink that the regular tattoo removal junk doesn’t work on.”

It was a flat-out lie, but it wasn’t like she could tell the truth.

“How old is it?”

“About seventeen years.”

“You’re only thirty-two,” Harold protested immediately. “It can’t be seventeen years-”

He stopped speaking. Tension coiled in the room.

“They were recruiting at my school,” Doreen explained. “I wanted to help.” She snorted. “Dumbass teenagers.”

“You were recruited at fifteen?” John asked.

Doreen nodded. “First assignment.”

 

“When was your first kill?” Shaw asked, rubbing coke on the hole in her leg.

“Little under a year later. They raided the house, I was inside. Did for about ten. Never looked back.”

She cracked her neck.

“You were a child!” Harold sounded appalled.

“I did what I had to do,” she returned. God, he sounded just like-

No. _No._ She wasn’t going to think about him. Not now.

Shaw started sewing her leg back together. Doreen tried to ignore it, focusing instead on the dog in her lap.

“We’ve strayed rather far from the topic at hand,” Harold said at last. “Neo-Nazis, you said were the first group?”

She shrugged and said mildly, “Most of my work has been focused on white supremacists. I’m not sure how they’d’ve found me, though.”

“There’s always a way,” John said thoughtfully.

“It’s more likely the syndicate figured it out,” Doreen said. “I have to be home by seven tomorrow evening for extraction, but they don’t know that.” Her exhausted mind buzzed and hummed with plans, the potion discarding those that wouldn’t work. “If I can stay alive that long, I’ll be fine.”

“So we just have to keep you alive until tomorrow evening,” John said. “That sounds doable.”

Shaw snipped the thread and pulled out a roll of gauze. Everyone was quiet as she wrapped up Doreen’s leg.

“Thank you,” Doreen said when she was done.

Shaw stripped off her gloves. “No sweat. What’s the plan?”

She directed the question toward Harold, but it was Doreen who answered. “I leave at seven tomorrow night. Once I’m home, I’ll be safe.”

Shaw snorted. “You believe that?”

“I do,” she said.

“Your home’s not exactly secure,” Shaw said. “It wouldn’t be difficult to break in.”

“Not to the main,” she said. “But the hidden rooms?”

“Like the one behind your closet?”

Doreen chuckled. “A red herring. Nothing back there but crawlspace. Are your bugs still working?”

Harold looked offended. “You were the one to disable them?”

“It wasn’t hard.” 

“How’d you find them?” John asked.

Doreen stared at him. “I’ve been doing this a long time, John. It’s not difficult to find cameras.”

“You do a camera sweep every day?”

“You don’t?”

“That is immaterial,” Harold said quickly. “We need to get you home, safely. Our best bet will be at four o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“Why four?” she asked, though the Felix was telling her to go along with it.

“Too early for the locals to get to work or the tourists to be out,” John said.

“And too late for the criminals to still to be up,” Shaw added.

“We’d best make ourselves comfortable,” Harold said. “We’ve got a long wait.”

Shaw settled herself at the table and started to clean her guns. John and Harold each picked up a book. Doreen pet Bear absently, thinking.

How had her cover been blown? She’d been careful - so, so careful. She hadn’t blown a job in her entire career - well, there’d been the Death Eater thing, but she hadn’t blown that until after the Dark Lord was dead, and besides, she’d been a teenager.

Maybe she’d gotten complacent? Or maybe there was a flaw in her cover? She hadn’t seen any, and the people who’d made it did that sort of thing for a living, but there was always a chance. Or maybe she hadn’t been blown at all, and Moyeu just thought two years was long enough and she’d be looking for a bigger piece of the pie. He’d done it to others, after all.

Really, now that she was thinking about it, it seemed the most likely answer.


	5. Walking in the Dark

_August 1997_

Stroop sat beside the bed in St. Mungo’s. A blue glow was settled over the child’s nose and mouth, indicating a spell to help with breathing. The bruises and cuts had been healed quickly enough, but the internal damage was taking time. Most of her organs had been at least nicked, if not cut; her appendix had burst under the strain, and she’d had a stroke shortly after the Healers had begun working on her.

It really was a miracle she was even still alive. They’d had her for months. Even he, with his intimate knowledge of their sadism, had begun to give up hope. When Tonks and the Auror contingent had gone to raid the hideout, he’d been expecting to find that they’d killed her. A small part of him had hoped for a body, so they could at least bury her. Instead, she’d returned alive - badly hurt, but alive.

She’d been asleep in the bed for two days now. The Healers were cautiously hopeful she’d wake up soon, but there was no telling what shape her mind would be in. Stroop hoped it wouldn’t be too bad; she was the youngest Potions Mistress in two centuries, she’d mastered Occlumency and Legilimency almost before she’d come of age (or well before, in the American tradition), she was bright and sweet and funny. If she had to be kept in the Janus Thickey ward, it might be kinder to kill her so her soul could be at rest.

Stroop stood, bent over, and kissed her forehead. Her pocketwatch glinted on the nightstand as he took his leave.

_March 2012_

John left around six and came back bearing bags of takeout. Shaw took down plates and they ate around the table. Bear sat by John - apparently he was the most likely to slip him scraps. Harold scowled every time John dropped a piece of food on the floor - completely by accident, of course.

After dinner, Harold directed her to one of the bedrooms. Shaw was in the bedroom to her right, and Harold across the hall. John would stay in the living room, ready to react in case of an attack. Much to her surprise, she fell asleep almost instantly and managed two hours of unbroken sleep before the nightmares woke her. Knowing from long experience that she wouldn’t be sleeping against for at least another hour, she stood and wandered out to the bookshelves in the hallway. 

“Couldn’t sleep?”

She jumped, hand automatically scrabbling for a gun or wand that were both sitting on her bedside table before she’d even finished turning her head. At the end of the hallway, John put his hands up and smiled a small, ironic smile.

“Not well,” she answered when she recognized him.

“Nightmares?”

She just shrugged in response.

“Nothing to be ashamed of. We all get them. You wanna talk?”

She hesitated. “Wouldn’t have figured you for the talking type.”

“Eh.” He shrugged. “I know how much things weigh on you.”

She caved. “Sure.”

She followed him out to the main room. Bear’s bed was empty; seeing her look at it, John explained, “He sleeps with Shaw when he can. She loves that dog.”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“The Aryan nation guys we stole him from,” John said matter-of-factly. “They’d gotten him off a military guy they killed.”

“That explains the Dutch commands, I guess.”

“Would you like some more tea?”

“Sure. Where are the bags?”

“On the counter.”

She picked her now-cold mug up and took it to the kitchen. She microwaved two cups of water - one for her, one for John - and brought them back to the living room. John was sitting where he had earlier, and she handed him his mug and curled up on the couch, careful of her injured leg.

“More painkillers?”

“It’s just soft-tissue damage. I’ll be fine.”

“Sure.”

They sat in companionable silence for a few moments, and then John asked, “What was in your dream?”

She looked into her mug, unsure if she really wanted to go there - but she would never see him again, and he didn’t even know her real name, so maybe he was the safest person to tell.

“It was the first person I ever killed,” she said quietly. “My cousin. He used to sneak into my room, at night, and when I tried to tell my parents they didn’t believe me. Beat me for lying and making things up. When I was six, I had enough, and smashed him over the head with a lamp. No one heard me screaming for hours, so I just had to - to lay there, under him, with his blood on me and his hands….” She trailed off.

“You were six?”

She nodded.

“What did your parents do?”

“Took me to church for an exorcism. When that didn’t work, they decided I’d already been defiled, so no good Christian would want me for a wife. They started training me up for the only job I’d be suited for.”

“Which was?”

“Prostitution. They took me to my first job when I was ten.”

“Holy shit.”

She sipped her tea. “I did not have a happy childhood. That’s one of the reasons I was so quick to agree to spy on that first group, I just wanted to do something useful for a change. Have some sort of power.”

“Did you get it?”

She laughed mirthlessly. “John, you know as well as I do there’s no power in what we do. Or what you did, anyway, I can’t imagine you’re still with the Agency.”

He stiffened. “How’d you know?”

“Part of my job is to identify which country’s operatives are involved in a given situation,” she reminded him. “You fight like Army and CIA mixed together, so I’m guessing you did some time in the military, moved up to special forces, and got recruited. Am I right?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. 

“So how’d you get roped into this?”

“CIA tried to kill me. I went homeless for a few months. Harold found me and offered me a job.”

“That’s all it took?”

“That’s all it took. If you don’t mind me asking, where are you really from?”

“England,” she said. “Born and raised. You?”

“Kansas. How’d you get recruited into the UN?”

She shrugged. “After that first job, I got captured. Tortured for a while. You know how it goes. When I got out, someone came to visit me in hospital. Next thing I knew I was on a plane to Kenya to help clean up the election mess.”

“How’d that go?”

“Buncha angry militants with automatics, and it took a year and a half to clean up.”

“I remember hearing about that. I didn’t realize the UN was involved.”

“We’re black-book, remember? Don’t exist.” She drank more of her tea. 

“Walking in the dark,” he said, sounding like he was quoting someone.

“Exactly.”


	6. Wait

_September 1997_

Granger woke up. Stroop was teaching a class, but he went to Mungo’s in lieu of dinner. He stopped in the doorway of her room, unsure of his welcome.

She looked up. “Stroop!”

“Granger.”

Awkward silence filled the room. Eventually, she said, “Get in here, we need to talk.”

He closed the door behind himself and took a seat.

“I’m not coming back to the wizarding world,” she told him. 

“I see.”

“It’s been nothing but blood purity and torture since the moment I found out.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet. It’s not like I have A-levels. I’m sure I’ll figure out something.”

He quirked a small smile. “It seems you always do.”

“Yeah.”

They looked at each other for a moment, and then Stroop blurted out, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

She blinked. Taking that as encouragement, he continued.

“You were right. I was hurt and angry and I lashed out. I’ve always done it and I’ve always regretted it after and I’m _sorry._ ”

She patted his hand. “I had a lot of time to think,” she said quietly. “What you said - it wasn’t okay, at all, but I know you. I was hurt and angry too, and I made stupid mistakes because of it. We’re only human.”

“Yes, well.” He pulled his emotions back into line. “Have the Healers said when you can leave?”

“Maybe the weekend.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah.”

Another silence, this one not quite so awkward.

“I had a visitor today,” she said suddenly. “The Wizard Relations Department of the United Nations. He offered me a job.”

“Will you take it?”

“Don’t know. Thinking about it.”

“What’s the job?”

“Their version of an Auror department. I’ve had enough of fighting, but if I learned anything at Ilvermorny, it’s that fighting’s all I know how to do.”

“You’re bright. You’ll learn other skills. You _are_ the youngest Potions Mistress in two centuries.”

“Yeah.” She sighed and slumped back into her pillows.

“You’re tired,” Stroop said. “I’ll visit again later, all right?”

“Okay,” she mumbled, already half asleep.

_March 2012_

“Here we are,” John said, pulling up in front of her house and putting the car in park.

They piled out of the car and hurried up the walk. Doreen unlocked the door and they all went inside.

“Bathroom,” she said, pointing. “Kitchen - help yourself, the fridge’s full of perishables. Living room. I need to do some stuff on the hidden side, so I’m going to disappear for a while.”

“I’ll come with you,” John said.

She shook her head. “Sorry. International law. More’n my life’s worth to let you back there.”

His lips tightened. “Fine.”

“Make yourselves at home,” she said. “I won’t be long. There should be tea and coffee in the cupboards.”

She hurried down the hallway and through the door warded with Notice-Me-Nots. Her potions bubbled away steadily, and none of them were stable enough to transport, so she had to Vanish them. She hated doing it - that was money going up in smoke, so to speak, and she was nearly out besides - but she didn’t have the time to make them stable enough to bottle, that would take at least a day at this stage.

With a few hurried sweeps of her wand, the spacious room was cleared out. Her ingredients and miscellaneous equipment was shrunk and in her cauldron, which she cast a Notice-Me-Not on and hovered into the duffel bag that had been gathering dust in a corner. She’d always known a rushed exit was a possibility, and there were bags stashed in every room, ready to be packed with whatever items were absolutely essential,

She took a final glance around the room. Nothing remained other than bare wood and off-white walls. She cast a Scouring Charm to make she hadn’t left anything behind accidentally and left.

Before she was out of the hallway, she conjured drywall and charmed on a coat of paint. “Right,” she said aloud, and went to the bathroom to grab the hammer out from under the sink.

John and Shaw came running, guns drawn, at the first thud. Doreen turned, smiled at them, and worked the hammer out of the wall. “Can’t leave the door hidden, can I?” she asked, and swung again. “Won’t bother with the closet, nobody’s going to notice that.”

“Want some help?” John asked.

She worked the hammer free again and spun it in her hand. “Only got the one.” She swung again, a little further left. “Won’t say no to some help sweeping when I’m done.”

Tearing a door-sized hole in the wall was something that sounded like it should take a long time, but it really didn’t. It was faster with magic, of course, but even using a hammer took less than an hour. It was the cleanup that took a while, with only one broom and one dustpan. The trash bags were left in the hallway - whatever team came in to clean up would take care of it, just like they always did, and put molding on the doorframe beside.

When the hallway was finally cleared, she said, “Okay. I just need ten minutes to pack.”

“And then what are you gonna do?” Shaw asked.

“I’m gonna wait for extraction.”  
CHAPTER FIVE - Extraction

_September 1997_

The morning after Stroop left Hermione lying in the hospital, he got a letter with a powerful Your-Eyes-Only charm preventing anyone but him from reading it.

_Stroop,  
I’m off to the Muggle world. I can’t face wizards anymore. If you need me, I’ve included hairs for a Trackers’ Potion._

_I still don’t know why you went quiet and angry at Ilvermorny. I probably never will. Still, you’re the only family I have. I’ve taken precautions - you are the only person in all of the Wizarding world to have anything with my essence. Take care it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands._

_There’s a lot I want to say to you. There’s a lot I want to say in general. I won’t, though. I’ll just say “thanks” and leave it at that. You know how grateful I am to you for teaching me so much over the years, and for always being there, and for keeping me sane enough that the Dark Lord didn’t discover me._

_Only use the Trackers’ Potion in case of an emergency. I have my wand still._

_BE CAREFUL. The people they caught weren’t the only ones who would like revenge on either or both of us._

_Hermione_

Stroop read the note until he had it memorized, and then put it in a box with a small white flower that never stopped blooming.

_March 2012_

It was a quiet day. All but Harold kept weapons close to hand. Shaw and John twitched whenever Doreen went near a window. She cooked throughout the day and packed what they didn’t eat - disposable containers she sent John out to buy and was careful to only touch with gloves on. The three of them would appreciate some home-cooked meals, of that she was certain, and she’d grown into a damn good cook.

At six o’clock, she pushed them out the back door. “I’ll be fine for an hour,” she told them. “Go on now, before they get here and see me with guests.”

A little less than hour later, traffic on the street was heavier than usual. The cars parked first three houses down, then spread out slowly to make it look like someone was having a party. At seven o’clock on the nose, a taxi rolled to a stop in front of her house. The driver came up and knocked on the door.

“Your cab, ma’am,” he said. He was young, maybe nineteen, certainly not old enough to have an American license for the Glock .40 hiding beneath his rain jacket.

“Thank you,” she said, and shouldered the bag that held her Potions equipment before following him out to the car. “Is this your first fare?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, nearly glowing.

“That’s lovely,” she said, hoisting her bag into the backseat. “What’s your name?”

“Fred, ma’am. Fred Green.”

“What a nice name.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

When they started moving, she said, “Fred, don’t be worried, all right? I’ve been under for three years and I need to decompress.”

“Yes, ma’am. They told me that would happen.”

Doreen used the two-hour drive to shed her old identity, pulling Hermione to the forefront for the first time in nearly three years. As her compartmentalization broke down, she felt the emotions anew - rage, fear, sadness. She screamed and punched the back of the seat, sobbed until she was nearly dry-heaving, laughed until she could barely breathe. They were almost done with the drive when she regained her equilibrium.

She pulled herself together and, after a few minutes of silence, said, “Thanks, Green.”

“For what?”

“Not panicking. The first time I needed extraction and decomped, the driver pulled over to make sure I was all right. We had to shoot our way out of that one.”

“Really?”

“Really. He didn’t last very long.”

“I imagine not, ma’am. Here we are.”

They pulled to a stop outside an abandoned factory. Hermione didn’t know where she was, and she didn’t particularly care. She’d be gone in less than a day - probably in less than four hours - so it truly didn’t matter.

Her boss was waiting for her inside. Fat and greying, he was one of a handful of people who knew her real name and history.

“Farmer!” he boomed.

She smiled. “Hullo, Barrel.”

“Good to see you made it out in one piece. Any injuries?”

“Leg got shot yesterday.”

“How bad?”

“Eh.” She shrugged. “Got muscle, and it hurts, but it’ll be fine in a few weeks.”

“God love how fast you heal,” he said. “Any preferences for your next assignment?”

“Er.” She swallowed. “This is the first time I blew my cover in - what, fourteen years?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“First time in the field,” she said.

“What’re you getting at?”

She leaned on a rusty ten-gallon drum. “I’m getting old, Barrel. Fourteen years in the field?”

“You keep turning down promotions.”

She stayed silent.

“Are you still holding out hope for civilian life?”

“Barrel, I started working for you when I was seventeen. I’m thirty-two. How many of us last this long?”

“You’re it.”

“I know. And there’s a reason. I’m getting worn out, Barrel. I’m not going to be much use soon.”

“Are you asking to disappear?”

“I’m asking to retire. A fake identity, maybe some money to get me started. You know I’m not going to go blabbing to anyone.”

“I know.” He stuck his hands in his coat pockets. “The thing is, Farmer, I need to run this up the chain.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s all I ask. Barrel, please. I’ve done good work. Let me rest now. Get a normal job somewhere, get my kicks at a boxing tournament or something.”

“No promises. I’ll run it up, but no promises.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course. Higher-ups might not be happy.”

“Are they ever?”

He smiled briefly. “Since you’re tired, I think I can manage two weeks off for you.”

“Really?” she said, delighted. Her last vacation had been three days between assassinating a bunch of politicians in Eastern Europe and interrogating a man who’d transported vials of weaponized anthrax across national boundaries.

“I _think_ ,” he repeated. “It may get cut short, but since you’re injured, I can make a case for some downtime. Fix that leg while you’re there with your - ah - _special_ medicine. Where do you want to go?”

“Somewhere warm,” she said instantly. 

“Too many northern winters, eh?” He rubbed his hip. He hid it well, particularly from the newer ones, but a downside of working for the same person for fourteen years was that they knew things about each other. She knew his arthritis acted up in the cold.

“Exactly.”

“Green will take you to your hotel for the night. I’ll talk to the higher-ups and get back to you on your requests.”

“Thanks, Barrel. I really appreciate it.”

“Take care, Farmer,” he said, and held out his hand. Hermione shook it and returned to Green’s taxi, looking forward to some time in the sun.


End file.
